could watch the entrance to Meridion House. I switched off the engine and prepared to wait.
I was surprised and a little confused by my reception. It didn’t seem right. I’d never heard of a secret art centre!
I studied the business card the gatekeeper had given me: ‘Meridion House Art Centre’. There was a phone number and small print said they provided training for young artists. So, an art college? A private one? Very private, it seemed.
The card told me nothing else. The minimal information provided was, perhaps, intended simply to stop people wondering what Meridion House was. Again, I thought, quite clever. If there had been no information at all, public curiosity might have been unbounded.
I wondered if young artists needed quite so much security and privacy, but I didn’t get very far with that one. Perhaps the youngsters were all from countries where people like themselves lived in golden palaces behind high walls that kept out the great unwashed. That would fit in with Jimmy Mack’s oblique reference to foreigners.
I shrugged, and waited.
I waited the best part of an hour. Nobody came in or out inthat time, and it was cold. I was cold. Running the engine for a few minutes every once in a while didn’t do much to warm me up. I gave it up as a bad job and quit.
While I was in the vicinity, I drove into Port Holland, parked and set off to look around once more. The village itself wasn’t much. Just a few terraced streets of modest cottages built originally for the workers and their families. The fine boat tied up at the jetty was the star. And pretty incongruous it looked. As I studied it, a couple of men came from below deck and began sweeping and polishing.
On such a cold, sunny morning the North Sea actually looked blue, and dangerously inviting. I made my way down the rough path to the beach, and thought once more what a mess it all was. It was a working beach, not one for holiday-makers. Broken concrete. Piles of washed-up kelp. Patches of sand and shingle. Swathes of big boulders. A few cobles, the property of men who still fished. A dozen or more fishermen’s huts, most improvised from spare parts and rubbish, and collectively looking as unsightly as any scrapyard.
I couldn’t help wondering if a man with a boat as big and fine as the one at the jetty couldn’t have found a more decorous environment. It was handy for his house, I supposed, but still…. Millionaires, or billionaires, often had both yachts and houses in beautiful places, not junkyards. What was wrong with Palma or Montenegro? Either would be perfect for a private art centre, as well as for a boat like this one. Perhaps the man just liked ugly.
Still, the huts caught your eye. They were interesting. I wandered between them. Some had windows and some hadmere openings, but in both cases wooden shutters, proof against the weather, prevented anyone looking inside. Not that I needed to look inside. I knew some were storage sheds for nets and lobster pots, and for spare parts and tools for the tractors and boat engines. Others could be stayed in overnight, or for a day or two. Some of the latter would be well equipped, while others would just be empty spaces and bare floors. Fishermen were like everyone else. Not all of them would want a home from home.
A little way above the beach was the blocked-up entrance to the tunnel that was the reason for the jetty in the first place. It was built for the shipment of iron ore brought from a nineteenth-century mine some four miles inland.
There were other tunnels in the cliffs along this coast, some to facilitate the extraction of ironstone and others from the days when alum shale was mined. For over two hundred years the production of alum for textiles had been a major industry in Cleveland, and the spoil heaps you could still see in a number of places were their legacy.
As my eyes ranged along the cliff face, they picked out another tunnel entrance, one I hadn’t noticed or known
I was surprised and a little confused by my reception. It didn’t seem right. I’d never heard of a secret art centre!
I studied the business card the gatekeeper had given me: ‘Meridion House Art Centre’. There was a phone number and small print said they provided training for young artists. So, an art college? A private one? Very private, it seemed.
The card told me nothing else. The minimal information provided was, perhaps, intended simply to stop people wondering what Meridion House was. Again, I thought, quite clever. If there had been no information at all, public curiosity might have been unbounded.
I wondered if young artists needed quite so much security and privacy, but I didn’t get very far with that one. Perhaps the youngsters were all from countries where people like themselves lived in golden palaces behind high walls that kept out the great unwashed. That would fit in with Jimmy Mack’s oblique reference to foreigners.
I shrugged, and waited.
I waited the best part of an hour. Nobody came in or out inthat time, and it was cold. I was cold. Running the engine for a few minutes every once in a while didn’t do much to warm me up. I gave it up as a bad job and quit.
While I was in the vicinity, I drove into Port Holland, parked and set off to look around once more. The village itself wasn’t much. Just a few terraced streets of modest cottages built originally for the workers and their families. The fine boat tied up at the jetty was the star. And pretty incongruous it looked. As I studied it, a couple of men came from below deck and began sweeping and polishing.
On such a cold, sunny morning the North Sea actually looked blue, and dangerously inviting. I made my way down the rough path to the beach, and thought once more what a mess it all was. It was a working beach, not one for holiday-makers. Broken concrete. Piles of washed-up kelp. Patches of sand and shingle. Swathes of big boulders. A few cobles, the property of men who still fished. A dozen or more fishermen’s huts, most improvised from spare parts and rubbish, and collectively looking as unsightly as any scrapyard.
I couldn’t help wondering if a man with a boat as big and fine as the one at the jetty couldn’t have found a more decorous environment. It was handy for his house, I supposed, but still…. Millionaires, or billionaires, often had both yachts and houses in beautiful places, not junkyards. What was wrong with Palma or Montenegro? Either would be perfect for a private art centre, as well as for a boat like this one. Perhaps the man just liked ugly.
Still, the huts caught your eye. They were interesting. I wandered between them. Some had windows and some hadmere openings, but in both cases wooden shutters, proof against the weather, prevented anyone looking inside. Not that I needed to look inside. I knew some were storage sheds for nets and lobster pots, and for spare parts and tools for the tractors and boat engines. Others could be stayed in overnight, or for a day or two. Some of the latter would be well equipped, while others would just be empty spaces and bare floors. Fishermen were like everyone else. Not all of them would want a home from home.
A little way above the beach was the blocked-up entrance to the tunnel that was the reason for the jetty in the first place. It was built for the shipment of iron ore brought from a nineteenth-century mine some four miles inland.
There were other tunnels in the cliffs along this coast, some to facilitate the extraction of ironstone and others from the days when alum shale was mined. For over two hundred years the production of alum for textiles had been a major industry in Cleveland, and the spoil heaps you could still see in a number of places were their legacy.
As my eyes ranged along the cliff face, they picked out another tunnel entrance, one I hadn’t noticed or known
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